The Sounds of Heads Bashing Against Walls

As the session starts, the biggest non-story of the year - the attempt to repeal the Minnesota Personal Protection Act - is getting underway.

Note to opponents - lotsa luck. Notes from the PiPress story:

It's been nine months and more than 15,000 permits have been issued since the new law passed, and opponents can't point to widespread trouble because of it. Nor can supporters say that public safety has improved markedly.

This is an absurd paragraph; the improvements that Concealed Carry reform brings occur over time. It's hard to identify crimes that didn't happen...

...unless, of course, they are entirely conspicuous by their absence. Like, for exaple, illegal shootings by permit holders.

Of course, for the opposition, it's never been about empirical evidence, as noted by this statement (emphasis is mine):

Nevertheless, several lawmakers are introducing legislation to reverse the law, and activists like Kate Havelin, with the Twin Cities Million Mom March, hopes that her message now will echo into the future.

"We think that having more guns on our streets, at our places of worship, at the mall, will not be made safer with people with handguns. It's a way to put all of us at greater risk," Havelin said.

"We think".

Maybe this is a sign of improvement; at least the opponents are prefacing their statements with that telling "We Think". For those of you who've been under a rock for the past twenty years, "thought" is all it is. There are now 36 states that have some sort of "shall-issue" or another. None have ever reported problems, most have eventually reported some benefits, and none has made a serious move to repeal. That includes states that are just as blinkeredly liberal as Minnesota - Washington, Oregon and Connecticut.

The "repeal" "movement" - bolstered by their friends in the media - are making a lot more noise than their actual importance warrants, by the way. Our old friends at the "RepealConceal" website, after a year of maintaining the fiction of being an independent, grass roots group, have given up the ghost and rolled over to being a mirror for Citizens for a Supine "Safer" Minnesota (hat tip to Joel Rosenberg, whose excellent blog shows where the bodies are figuratively buried among Minnesota's repeal "movement"). And the "Southwest Minnesota Peacemakers" site - perhaps the most insipid of all - seems not to have been updated in nearly a year, and continues to quote the loathsome Nazi sympathizer Boake Carter on its main page.

I'll follow the story. Or, should I say, "story".

Posted by Mitch at February 10, 2004 05:53 AM